Xfce Forum

ymeiron

Member

Registered: 2025-07-29

Posts: 3

How to tell Xfce to ignore its default configuration directory

My use case is that I run Xfce on a server, and multiple users (dozens) are going to connect remotely. On that system, somebody already installed Xfce and other software in a custom location, say /extra. So the xfce4-session executable is in /extra/usr/bin, and there are also /extra/etc/xdg and /extra/usr/share directories.

There is a lot of bloat in this custom installation, much of it broken. While I can't touch the /extra directory, I can override environment variables for the users. I was hoping to set XDG_CONFIG_DIRS and XDG_DATA_DIRS to another location where I have cleaned up configurations. However it only works partially.

Where it fails is that /extra/etc/xdg is still being used, despite overriding XDG_CONFIG_DIRS. Whichever directory I set is used as well, but that default location is also. This breaks the cleanliness: for example, /extra/etc/xdg/autostart has lots of stuff in it that are not needed: Blueman, power manager, Gnome Keyring and plenty of other things, some broken as mentioned earlier.

Once I start a session, I can disable these services for my session, but I would like them not to show up there in the first place (also when a new user logs in for the first time, they shouldn't have to deal with this).

So how to tell Xfce to ignore that "default" config directory? Ideally without recompiling or touching the users' home directories.

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 12,341

Re: How to tell Xfce to ignore its default configuration directory

Hello and welcome.

What version of Xfce are you dealing with?

The startxfce4 script sets XDG_CONFIG_DIRS (there is some logic there). Perhaps it is interfering?

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ymeiron

Member

Registered: 2025-07-29

Posts: 3

Re: How to tell Xfce to ignore its default configuration directory

Hello and thanks

This is Xfce 4.18.

I'm starting it with xfce4-session rather than startxfce4, that does not actually set the environment variables (I echo them from a terminal within the session, and they are as I set them).

ymeiron

Member

Registered: 2025-07-29

Posts: 3

Re: How to tell Xfce to ignore its default configuration directory

My hacky solution is to put .desktop files in the "good" XDG config autostart directory with the same names as those found in /extra/etc/xdg/autostart, then at least these defaults get overridden. You still see entries in the autostart tab of the session settings, but at least I got them to appear blank and unselected. All of the overriding files have the following content:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=
GenericName=
Comment=
Icon=image-missing
OnlyShowIn=
Exec=
Path=
Hidden=true
NoDisplay=true

Unfortunately there are more hard-coded paths in Xfce4 (e.g. the path to the panel migration executable) that make it difficult to "borrow" and installation.